“Thought you’d killed me, didn’t you? On that roof? Huh? Huh?” He cackled like a witch. “I’m tougher than I look, Tally. Tougher than you think, brink, stink.”
Tally had only her eyes to communicate with now, and she tried not to show the abject fear that was bubbling around inside her. Greene’s speech patterns were strange and unsettling, but she kept what expression she could neutral. Her best chance of getting out of this was to agree with him and not antagonize him any.
But that was easier said than done.
“Found my way here and King Gabriel took me in. Said I could join the court, I thought, fraught, wrought.”
Tally nodded, stopped, then nodded some more for emphasis.
“Castle Jaxport is a good place, and the king is a good man. I think so, don’t you? Clue? Spew? True?”
Tally had only the nod to reply with.
Greene yelled and slapped her across the face with a stinging blow, spinning her head sideways and knocking her body painfully onto her side.
“Don’t lie! I don’t want my wife to be a liar! I don’t! I don’t! I don’t! If you think he’s a good man, why did you start shooting the place up? Why did you try to kill the king? You’re a liar! Fire! Cryer!”
Greene stamped his foot in the way a toddler might to emphasize every rhyming word of his struggling thoughts. He made a fist and thumped it into his thigh seven or eight times in quick succession.
Tally’s cheek stung, but she was glad of the gag for the first time because it softened what would have been a horrendous blow to the side of her face. She implored Greene with her eyes, trying to convey her apologies, but his head was up and he was looking towards the skylight. He raised his hands to it and began to shuffle from foot to foot—he could have been about to break out into a rain dance, or he could have been psyching himself up to carry out an atrocity—Tally couldn’t be sure which might make more sense.
Greene’s body relaxed and his hands came down to his sides. He reached behind him and, from the belt in the back of his pants, he pulled a knife. A blade that, if it wasn’t the one he’d sliced open the throats of his traveling companions with in Georgia, was its exact cousin. Long and curved with a serrated top edge and a viciously sharp cutting edge that seemed to shimmer with its own inner light.
The light flickered up into Greene’s already murderous eyes. The tip of the knife was pointed slowly towards Tally’s body, too—like an accusation.
The wall was cold at her back, the rope around her ankles and wrists biting deep as she tried to slither along the wall away from Greene.
The wonky smile that twisted his lips sat pitched somewhere between a snarl and expectant anticipation. He licked at his lips with all the expectancy of a starving man about to fall upon his first meal in days.
Tally turned her head as a metallic clatter carried across the room. There was a metal-studded door on the opposite wall that was swinging open.
Dad! Dad! You found me! You found me! Tally screamed in her head. Her dad was going to save her again, just like he had on the roof.
The door swung fully back then, and Tally’s words froze in her mind like spikes of cold agony.
It was not Josh in the doorway. It was Ten-Foot.
4
Maxine sat across the huge mahogany table from Gabriel Angel. Candles burned in two large, ludicrously ornate candelabras. The table was filled with plates of food that were both hot and cold. There were slices of pork and beef as well as a whole roasted chicken. Accompanying this, mashed potatoes and tureens of vegetables. Perhaps most of it had come from cans, but the sumptuousness of the banquet that had been laid out for just the two of them by Gabe’s servants was a sight to behold. The aromas alone were working their way from her nostrils to her stomach, and the rumbling that was eliciting had begun to get uncomfortable.
But if Maxine knew nothing else, she knew that she wasn’t going to touch one morsel of this food. She wasn’t going to break down and eat even though she was ravenous. She wasn’t going to give Gabe the pleasure of seeing her crack.
The last four days in the castle, since Josh and the others had made their escape, had been beyond tense. Maxine had been kept in her room alone. She hadn’t seen Storm or Larry at all. She thought she might have heard Grace howling at one point through the wooden walls, but there’d been no confirmation of that.
She’d been brought food by Harbormen. Simple fair levered from cans, but it had sustained her. Thirty or so hours ago, however, they had stopped bringing her food. All that had been left in her room in the interim, all brought by the silent Harborman who had before been bringing her meals, had been bottles of water. When she’d asked about food, no answer had been forthcoming. And so now she was hungry as hell.
But she was not going to eat. And she’d told Gabe so.
Gabe had nodded, dumped a slice of pork on his plate, then carved it like he was dissecting a cadaver.
The dining room was attached to Gabe’s quarters. Gilt-framed mirrors were hung along the walls, but unlike what could be seen in much of Castle Jaxport, there was red carpeting across the floor. There were no windows to the outside world, as they were in the very heart of the bonded warehouse, but the mirrors gave some sense of space and multiplied the candlelight agreeably.
“Your husband is a bit of a die-hard, isn’t he, Max? Never gives up. You know, I should have just killed him when I had the chance.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“It won’t be a mistake I make again, believe me.” Gabe poured himself another goblet of wine and drank half of it in two gulps. He burped theatrically and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“You love to play the part, don’t you?” Maxine asked.
Gabe shrugged. “I’m not playing, Max. This is the real thing.”
He waved a hand expansively around the room. “These people really do believe in me. I came into their lives at precisely the right time. They were looking for someone to take the lead, and I wanted to lead.”
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, Gabriel.”
Gabe smiled and took another swallow of wine. “Don’t think, just because Josh got away, that you can do and say what you want, Max.”
“You won’t find him. He’s too smart for that.”
Gabe laughed. “Find him? Maxie, baby, I don’t need to find him. I have his wife and his… well, I won’t say son… that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, so let’s just call Storm a boy he used to know. Josh will come to me, and you know it. The last boy scout won’t be able to help himself.”
That bit into Maxine, because she knew it to be true, but again, she was determined not to show it.
“I’m surprised you never told him about us and that day at the hotel, Maxine. Surely, married couples should share everything?”
Years after Maxine and Gabriel had split after a fight outside a Raleigh roadhouse—a fight in which Josh had physically intervened and bested Gabe there on the tarmac—Gabe had turned up at Maxine and Josh’s married home, full of apologies and decrees that he wanted to ‘make things better in a grown-up way.’
Maxine had given him the benefit of the doubt and gone with him to lunch, where Gabe had secretly taken photographs of her at the table and then, at some point, slipped a drug into her drink. She’d woken, hours later, in a motel room. Her clothes awry, her memory shot, and her fingernails caked in blood that wasn’t her own.
A couple of weeks later, she’d found out she was pregnant with Storm.
“Nothing to say?” Gabe raised an eyebrow.
“Why am I here?”
“It’s the first day of the rest of your life, Max. Every king must have a consort, and I have chosen you.”
“You’d have to drug my drink again.”
Gabe smiled. “That’s not what you said when I asked Storm to kill Josh. I seem to remember that you promised me the universe if I would only spare Josh. Well, Josh is spared. So… where’s my universe?”
“Josh spared himself, Gabriel. All bets are off.”
Gabe put down his drink and twisted his fork into the pork on his plate, then lifted the quivering slice of meat up to his lips. He kept his eyes fixed on Maxine the whole time he chewed. After he swallowed, he poured and swallowed another few mouthfuls of wine.
“I have all the time in the world to break you, you know.”
“I don’t care about myself, Gabe. Don’t think that I will give into you to save myself—I’d rather Josh and Tally got away from your influence and never came anywhere near your pretend kingdom. You can’t threaten me by saying you’ll hurt Storm because I know it to be a lie. You won’t hurt your own son…”
Gabe raised a finger. “So, you admit it, he is my son? You knew it all along?”
“I had no way of knowing.”
“And yet, you could have had a simple paternity test to find out the truth.”
“Yes, I could have.” Maxine had said the words quietly because she knew the way the conversation was going to go even before it did.
“But you didn’t, did you? You didn’t want to be confronted with your own adultery even if it might confirm the opposite. You just wanted to leave well enough alone and hope I never turned up again, didn’t you, Maxie? But look, here I am!”
Gabe stood on his chair, stepped up on the table, and walked the ten feet towards her, kicking plates and bowls in every direction as he moved. He tossed her empty plate to one side and cleared a space for himself to sit down on the table edge, dangling his feet on both sides of her chair. There was a trail of destruction behind him, and their eyes were locked tight together as he leaned forward. Maxine moved back as far as the chair back would allow, but Gabe’s feet stopped her from getting out of the chair completely.
“Max, now is the time for you to confront what you did that night.”
“I was drugged! I couldn’t stop you!”
Maxine could still reach for a knife if she dared. There was one on the table next to Gabe’s thigh. It was silver, ornate, but it had a point that would slice into him if she wanted to do it. If she wanted to take the chance. Storm was safe, whatever she did. Perhaps Josh would realize that there was no way he and a small number of combatants would be able to go up against Gabe and the Harbormen. They must know it would be certain death.
Maxine weighed up the move in the seconds she spent counting Gabe’s heavy breaths—if she reached for him and stabbed him now, there was a good chance he would kill her in a fit of rage, and then she would be out of this mess of a situation. Out of it once and for all.
She might even take Gabe with her. Especially if she lunged for his throat where, this close up, she could see a throbbing vein that she might, if luck was with her, reasonably be able to sever.
Gabe was transfixed by her. His eyes still drilling into hers.
He smiled. “You think I don’t know what you’re contemplating, Maxie? You think I don’t know you so well—even though we’ve been apart all this time—and know what you’re planning? Why do you think I made sure there was a knife there for you to use if you wanted to?”
Maxine’s eyes flicked to the blade and back to Gabe.
Surely, he couldn’t…
But he could, and before she could assemble another thought, Gabe reached down past his thigh, picked the knife up by the blade, and held it out for her to take.
“Be my guest,” said Gabriel Angel, and he pushed the knife towards her.
They had searched all day and not found Tally. Even with Henry and Donald more or less fit to search, they’d traveled through the Jacksonville suburb meeting no Harbormen, and no residents other than rats and the odd stray, starving dog.
They’d moved as best they could in the hard shadows cast around the buildings by the late autumn sun, strong as it was. The air felt humid but not hot. Clouds in the sky might threaten rain at some point, but while they’d searched, the weather had held. They’d split into three groups and quartered the surrounding area in as systematic a fashion as possible, trying to be as thorough as they could with the houses and stores they searched, and then meeting back up at designated times to check on each group’s progress and to designate new areas to search.
Josh had managed to keep his energy up for a good few hours, but as the day moved into the afternoon, he began to flag. Karel handed him her canteen of water as he rested against the wall of another deserted residence. They had no reason to believe Tally might be here, and again, the futile nature of the expedition was seeping up through Josh’s thinking.
“If we haven’t found her by this evening, I can only assume that she’s been taken to Jaxport, and we’ll have to get her out with the others.”
Karel took the canteen back as she nodded. “I think you’re right. Maybe a Harborman found them, got lucky with Donald and Henry, and took her back because he knew Gabriel would want her more than almost any one of us. Except you.”
Josh couldn’t fault the Defender’s logic, but still replied, “But the one thing that makes me suspicious is that whoever it was didn’t kill Donald or Henry. Why wouldn’t he? He had them at his mercy.”
“It’s a crazy world, Josh. And it’s getting crazier all the time.”
With nothing more to be said, they searched the house and found the nothing they were expecting. Josh felt his feet dragging, and his eyes told him he needed to rest. However desperate he might be to find his daughter, all evidence was now pointing to her not being anywhere in the vicinity, and if they were going to attack Jaxport in order to mount their rescue mission, then they would need to be rested and alert if they were going to have any chance in a firefight with Gabriel’s men.
Josh checked his watch. It was time for the next meet-up. Slowly, he led Karel back towards the designated rendezvous point at a burned-out tattoo parlor a mile from where they’d made their base. It was blackened and wrecked inside, but some of the tattoo artist’s pictures had survived on the walls, giving the place the sense that the past was still alive in some way. Josh could look at the pictures and trigger memories of a past where getting a tattoo might have been an exciting highlight a person’s life. Back when you didn’t have to fight for your life, or spend your days searching for lost loved ones.
Most of the others were there already, and they looked as exhausted as Josh felt.
“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this,” he said. “If she was close by, we would have found her by now, and as much as my heart is telling me to keep looking, my head tells me there’s going to need to be a different solution. We should take some time to recuperate.”
Donald and the others nodded their agreement, and Josh could see they welcomed at least the promise of a few hours’ rest. Filly, Martha, and Henry turned up soon after that and agreed readily to Josh’s suggestion, so they made their way back to the house where they’d left Halley guarding the thermite and the rest of their meager supplies. He’d been charged with making the Molotov cocktails while they were gone, as well as seeing what else he could come up with in terms of improvised explosive devices.
Josh was the first through the door, though, and it was clear that something wasn’t right. Halley wasn’t with the thermite or the cocktails. There was a smashed bottle in the middle of the floor, and gas had leaked out of it in a puddle.
Josh drew and cocked his SIG, signaling to those behind him to do the same. Walking in with his gun raised, he covered the door into the kitchen while Donald and Henry came behind him with their weapons raised, eyes squinting along the barrel.
“Halley?” Josh called.
“I’m here!” Halley called back. The voice was muffled and sounded like it was coming from upstairs.
“What’s happened, Halley?”
“It’s very simple, but he doesn’t want you to shoot him.”
“Who doesn’t want me to shoot him?”
“I believe his name is Dolan. But you know him as Ten-Foot.”
Josh looked at Poppet, and Poppet, whose o
wn pistol was drawn, mouthed “Ten-Foot?” back at him with incredulity.
Every gun was now pointed at the stairs in a porcupine of muzzles.
“He’s brought Tally back!” Halley called down.
Josh froze, the worst possible images of what bringing Tally back might have meant. Her body? He steeled himself. “Is she… okay?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m okay. He’s right. Ten-Foot brought me back here.”
Josh turned to Karel and whispered, “Take Henry, Filly, and Jingo. If Ten-Foot’s here, it’s a trap. Go and see the lay of the land. See if there are any Harbormen waiting to take us all down.”
Josh then turned back to the stairs. “Can I come up?” he called, walking to the stairs and putting his foot on the bottom step.
“Only if you come unarmed, Mr. Boss Man!” It was Ten-Foot, all six feet of hard muscle with that scarred face on top. The molasses in his voice with its underlying sneer was there. The petty criminal teenager who’d turned into a vicious murderer in the wake of the apocalypse.
“How do I know you’re not going to shoot me, Ten-Foot?”
“If I wanted to shoot you, I’ve had enough chances, Boss Man. I’ve brought back your precious daughter.”
“Who you took in the first place!”
Tally called down again, “No, he didn’t, Dad! Ten-Foot… well, he rescued me.”
“Rescued you?”
“Yes. I was about to be… well, whatever. He rescued me. Killed the guy who had taken me, and instead of taking me back to the castle, he brought me here.”
It still stank of a trap to Josh. He couldn’t quite understand the play, but he trusted Ten-Foot no further than he could shot put an elephant.
Supernova EMP Seriries (Book 4): Final End Page 4
